Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Records - A Sunny Afternoon in Waterloo (1988)

Long after the "classic" Records lineup that included John Wicks (www.johnwicksandtherecords) and Will Birch (www.willbirch.com) was put to pasture, a vinyl-only affair titled, A Sunny Afternoon in Waterloo, found it's way onto select power-poppin' turntables in 1988. Contained within were eight demos from a 1978 recording session, none of which had appeared in any form on the Records flabbergasting, debut magnum pop-opus, Shades In Bed. Thoroughlyunrepresentative of the impeccable, genre-defining Records albums to follow (from 1979 to 1982) Sunny Afternoon is a gleeful snapshot of the band immersed in Dave Edmunds-style pub rock. Unabashed, unadorned, and rootsy as all-get-out, it's a fun way to kill a half-hour, but lets not kid ourselves. The best was waiting in the wings.Incidentally, a few years ago John Wicks himself was nice enough to make me a CD-R of the album, a scan of which is included in the folder.

6 comments:

The Records' lead singer John Wicks apparently has the master tapes to this album, which was re-mastered and released to CD on a European record label called Line in 1988. I first heard the songs from this album on Wicks' website for The Records roughly about 2 years ago.

Be advised John Wicks is the only original founder member in the new lineup of The Records, which isn't bad for a modern band. The redeeming quality, Wicks' voice sounds exactly the same as it did all those years ago.